Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954)

Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 - July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter of the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining realism and symbolism, an active Communist supporter, and wife of the Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera.

Kahlo was noted for her unconventional appearance, including pronounced eyebrows (unibrow) and a thin moustache, which she did not remove, and her choice of flamboyantly styled clothing.

Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón in her parents' house in Coyoacán, which at the time was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City. Her father, Guillermo Kahlo, was a painter and photographer of German-Jewish background, whose family originated from Oradea, Romania. The young Frida suffered a bout of polio at age six, which left her right leg looking much thinner than the other. Still, with the feisty and brash personality that she kept throughout her life, she overcame her disability.

In 1925, a trolley car collided with a bus Kahlo was riding; an iron handrail impaled her and broke her spine. She survived her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, but she would have relapses of extreme pain, which would plague her for life.

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention from a medical career to painting. Drawing on her personal experiences, her works are often shocking in their stark portrayal of pain. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, often incorporating symbolic portrayal of her physical and psychological wounds. She was deeply influenced by her Mexican culture, which surfaced in her paintings' bright colors, dramatic symbolism, and oftentimes, harsh content.

Although Kahlo's work is sometimes classified as surrealist and she did exhibit several times with European surrealists, she never considered herself a surrealist. Her preoccupation with female themes and the figurative candor with which she expressed them made her something of a feminist cult figure in the last decades of the 20th century.

Her paintings attracted the attention of fellow artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married. They were often referred to as "The Elephant and the Dove" due to their difference in size. When they first married, he was 42, 6 ft 1 in. (1.86 m) tall, and 300 pounds (136 kg); she was 22, 5'3", and 98 pounds. Their marriage was a stormy one, and although the couple divorced, they remarried in 1940.

An active Communist supporter, Kahlo and Rivera supported Leon Trotsky and he was granted political asylum in Mexico to protect him from Joseph Stalin and his government in Russia. Initially, Trotsky lived with Rivera and then at Frida's home. Trotsky and his wife then moved to Cuernavaca, and Trotsky was later assassinated. Sometime after Trotsky's death, Frida denounced her former friend and praised the Soviet Union under Stalin. She spoke favorably of Mao, calling China "the new socialist hope". Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, supposedly of a pulmonary embolism. She had been ill throughout the previous year and had had a leg amputated owing to gangrene.